Don't worry about slipping up in spoken Japanese, you're only carrot after all
Come commiserate with perpetual learners of the language over a shared ability to fill an everyday conversation with gaffes.
'Ghost kanji' lurk in the Japanese lexicon
Floating around the murky regions of digitized Unicode values are anywhere between 60 and 100 yūrei-moji — literally, "ghost characters" — haunting the Japanese kanji lexicon.
Halloween in Japan: Make up, dress up — and hook up?
Halloween has become one of the coolest days on the calendar, and it's less about sweets for kids than it is an occasion for grown-ups to deck themselves out in costumes for all-night reveling.
Counting the ways to talk about numbers in Japanese
From 'ban' and 'go' to 'kazu' and 'su,' there are a variety of ways to refer to numbers in Japanese depending on the situation.
Nothing is left undone with the plethora of negative prefixes in Japanese
Everything in life has a negative side to it. This nasty fact has also left its mark on Japanese, in the form of negative prefixes that will turn just everything into its opposite.
How to sum up Japan's summer of disaster in Japanese?
The summer of 2018 was one for the books — busting meteorological records, wreaking havoc and devastating entire regions along the coast of western Japan.
Rest, weary Japan traveler, and read this riveting 'ishibumi'
Much can be gleaned from memorials and markers erected at roadsides and elsewhere in Japan to commemorate people or mark events.
Getting to know Japan on a first-name basis
What's in a first name? In Japan, you'll find insights into societal change.
Will society still need me, will it still feed me, when I'm 100?
Back in the 1960s when Paul McCartney wrote "When I'm 64," the average life expectancy worldwide was 52. Yet half a century on, Japan is already gearing up for the era of 人生百年 (jinsei hyakunen, 100-year life).
Smile as you study:/ Sharp salaryman senryu/ satirize the slog
Highlights from the 31st Senryu for Salaried Workers Contest riff on the situations employees encounter at the office, home or both.
Spooky Japanese tales will scare the summer's heat out of you
Until recently, summer nights involved turning off the AC and doing things like kurumaza ni natte kaidanbanashi (sitting in a circle and telling ghost stories).
Get a handle on kanji in Japanese with the hand classifier
Considering the versatility of the human hand, it should come as no surprise that it can be found within more than 1,000 kanji.
